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Spyware

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Max47

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2004
Location
Indiana, US
Just wondering if anyone knows of a trusted program to check and rid of spyware, not really sure about what it is and what it does but i know its not good for your system. I have McAfee Virus Scan7.0 and Firewall plus4.0 so i think i am relatively safe behind the two. Im pretty computer illiterate when it comes to internet and networking, still working on the "computer itself" part but have came along way in the past few months. Any help on the topic of spyware, adware and just internet security/system bogging programs would be greatly appreciated, Thanks
 
alright ill check those out, thanks btw.

Want to ask another thing what do you guys think about McAfee Firewall 4.0? it seems to work good for me, as far as i know it controls and monitors any and all communication over the net and lets me decide on what traffic to allow/filter/block.
 
I use Ad-Aware to get rid of spyware. To answer the other two questions in your post, Spyware is a program that reports your surfing habits back to a company so they can use it for marketing purposes along with sensitive info about your computer. Also many of these programs also do nasty, outrageous stuff to your system like putting popup messages on your screen, changing your start page on your browser and redirecting search requests to a merchant or product of THEIR choosing. Having a firewall is not a sure fire way to prevent Spyware, it's loaded in with with many free programs such as Kazaa filesharing, and both parties are getting more aggeressive in it's use. Kazaa now disables itself if you remove the spyware/ad-ware that comes with it such as Gator (Gawd I hate Gator) My brother works for a company that does freelance computer repairs and help on site and one of the biggest problems he has to solve is computers slowing down or becomming near unusable because of all the spyware and the pop-ups that come with it.

The best thing to do is run an anti-spyware program every few months and be careful of the 'free' programs you download
 
i ran ad aware and search and destroy then i found another program called Spy Sweeper that found about 200+ more spyware entries etc. I think its the best prog for spyware removal.

abitavenger
 
alright thanks alot, if ya see this before i get the Spy sweeper post me a link to it i will try that, but when i ran ad-aware on my comp i found about 20 or so registries of possible threats, but i dont download much other than drivers, version updates, oc/monitoring software. dont know if any of those have spyware with them im pretty sure the drivers and version updates for games dont because i get those from the manufacturer/developers sites.. just doesnt seem like they would, the OC/monitoring software im not sure about.
 
I use to run Ad-aware until I found webroot spy sweeper spysweeper found 400 more things than ad-aware did.
read any information that comes up when you use spy sweeper, you don't want to delete the wrong things but I would say it is the best thing since sliced bread.
 
I use Spybot Search&Destroy and then Adaware afterwards and that pretty much cleans 'em out.
 
The Caretaker said:
I use to run Ad-aware until I found webroot spy sweeper spysweeper found 400 more things than ad-aware did.
read any information that comes up when you use spy sweeper, you don't want to delete the wrong things but I would say it is the best thing since sliced bread.

I tried out spy sweeper based on this fella's experience... and all i can say is DON'T DO IT!!!! I may have downloaded a tampered with version or something... but as soon as i installed it I was faced with an insurmountable Ad-ware problem on my computer: it installed like 50 other programs that made my computer un-useable after a few minutes of non-safe-mode windowing...

I just yesterday finished reinstalling everything after a clean-install (only remedy I could find) over this... save yourself the headache :(

Stick with Spybot and Adaware 6... they're a good team... ;)
 
The Caretaker said:
I use to run Ad-aware until I found webroot spy sweeper spysweeper found 400 more things than ad-aware did.
read any information that comes up when you use spy sweeper, you don't want to delete the wrong things but I would say it is the best thing since sliced bread.

hmmm, nice, ive always used Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D, as well as Spyware Blaster (LOVE that prog). ill check out spy sweeper when i get the chance.
 
I put "spy sweeper 2" on a few computers to test it.

On one computer I ran Ad Aware then Spybot S&D first.After this "Spy seeper 2" found 5 programs and 57 entries.
note: this computer has NAV 2002

On another computer I ran Spy sweeper 2 first. Ad aware then found 2 cookies and Spybot found another 2 cookies.
note: this computer has NAV 2003

Neither computer has had any problems due to Spy Sweeper 2 and I just ran it straight out of the box. I was actually prepaired to tank both computers, but this did not happen.

On both computers Ad Aware and Spybot had all the available updates and because I was just testing Spy Sweeper 2 it was NOT updated even though updates are available! After the test Spy Sweeper 2 was uninstalled from both machines.

So based on this limited test I vote for Spy Sweeper 2.
P.S. I paid the retail price for it. So no it was not free.
 
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